Whose history?

I have toured a number of beautiful historical sites on my trip. One of the questions I ask is "Whose history gets remembered and in what way does it get remembered?"

An example of one of these beautiful historical sites is the al-Jazzar Mosque in Acre (Akka). It is apparently built on top of earlier religious sites. The caretaker, upon learning that I work at a Palestinian university, refused to take the entrance fee from me.




The Market Mosque in Safad is another example. This mosque is now being used as an art gallery. The town of Safad is now home to a large artists' colony housed in the former Arab part of town and a large community of religious Jews.







A current article on the BBC's news website gets at this same question. The article, History lessons stymied in Lebanon, shows how difficult it is to agree on the history of a nation when there are disparate narratives, different histories, that must be accounted for. One can say that there is not one history, but rather, multiple histories and that we really should expose our students to all of them.

So the question remains, "Whose history gets remembered and in what way does it get remembered?"

A day in the hills

The red flower above is known locally as Shaqa'iq al-Naa'man al-Hamra (Red Anemone, Anemone coronaria).



From Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet: "There is no end to the praise of flowers because it is a verse in our eulogy to the land. But flowers can say more eloquently than language how beautiful our country is, how worthy of love, of even more than it gives already, because it is so intensely ours and because it is so beautiful. Thus the pain of love is mixed with a desire to be lost in the beloved." 1997, translated by Catherine Cobham.

These photos give you a taste for the beauty of the hills, the terraced olive groves, and the spring wildflowers of central Palestine. On this particular day we walked down the valley from Deir Ghassaneh to two natural springs and then back. We had just recently had significant winter rains so the wildflowers and plants were luxuriant.

You will see several photos of olive trees. The oldest olive trees with gnarled trunks are called locally "Zeitoun Rumi" to signify that they are very old, perhaps as old as "Rumi" (Roman) times.

You can double-click the photos to get a better look at the detail of the flowers.

The last photo shows the damage that wild boars have done to the terraced area. According to the local people, the wild boars are used as a weapon against Palestinian farmers by Israeli settlers in the area. The settlers, they say, have apparently turned wild boars loose to damage the crops. Note: An Internet search will yield additional articles about the damage that wild boars have done to Palestinian crops and farmers. I have not yet seen proof of the origin of these wild boars.

Below is al-Kitaniyya (Wild Flax, linum pubescens).




Below is al-Sawsan al-Shabaki (Dwarf Iris, Iris reticulata).



Below is Qarn al-Ghazal (Wild Cyclamen).



The pool of water in the photo below is all that remains from a recent heavy rain.



Note the cactus fruit on the cactus plant. Cactus in Arabic is "Saber". The word also means patience, so "Saber Ayoub" is known as the patience of Job or, in a word play, the cactus plant that belongs to someone named Ayoub.




We walked this agricultural road to the springs in the wadi.



Finally I found the proper name of this beautiful white flower. Cindy and I were at the entrance to the Banias waterfall and found a list of the wildflowers in the area. It is Allium neapolitanum. It is also known as Guernsey Star-of-Bethlehem.



Below is al-Kitamiyya (Lion's Tooth, Thrincia tuberosca).


In the photo below you see a Snobar (Pine) tree next to the Kharoob (Carob) tree. The carob seed pods are edible and are used as a chocolate substitute.



Note the honey bee in the flowers. The flower is called Blueweed or Viper's bugloss (Echium vulgare).








One of the springs we visited.



New leaves emerging on a fig tree.




Below, wild boar damage on terraces.

Eid Al-Mawlid An-Nabawi

Source of the photo.

Monday March 9th is a holiday to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. Birzeit University will be observing the holiday.

Sunni Muslims, the majority in Palestine, will observe the holiday on March 9th (12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal in the Muslim calendar) and Shia Muslims will observe it a few days later on March 14th (17th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal in the Muslim calendar).

Rain, water, and Palestine

I'll be writing more on this post soon, but I want to at least let my readers know about the rain we've been having in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Birzeit in the first month that I have been here.

Sleet on the 6th floor window of the Massa Building in Ramallah in the last week of February.


I spoke today to the meteorologist at Birzeit University. He reported that while a typical winter rainfall average is about 600 mm in Birzeit, (in 2006-07 the total was 734 mm and in the following rainy season it was 524 mm) we have 541 mm as of yesterday (March 2, 2009). In just three days last week (February 26-28) we received 109 mm. The February 2009 total is 271 mm.

I will be writing more soon about the importance of rainfall for the area but as you can see this rain in the past month has been very welcome in an area that depends so heavily on rainfall for human consumption and agriculture.

E-learning in Palestinian universities

I am gathering information about e-learning at Palestinian universities since that research is a part of my Fulbright program. Informally I have been talking with trainees at one of the courses here at the CCE about e-learning and its potential in Palestine. Several themes have emerged both from talking with the students and from my own investigation. I will be writing more on this topic later.

1. Everyone agrees that e-learning of some type (e-enabled, hybrid, blended) is a good thing in Palestine due to the difficulties of getting through Israeli checkpoints and the wall (al-Jidar) to attend F2F classes.

To give readers an idea of what I am talking about, the view below (on the left side of the photograph looking to the south toward Jerusalem) is of the Israeli separation wall just south of the Qalandia Crossing. Qalandia is located at the northern edge of greater Jerusalem (as defined by Israel).

On the other hand, there is reluctance to endorse 100% online learning in academia, the type of e-learning that we do at Minnesota State University, Mankato. My colleagues here list reasons such as the potential for cheating by students.

2. Internet infrastructure: (a) About 20% of Palestinians currently have access to the Internet. (b) Internet access is relatively expensive both due to monopolies within Palestine for the access and to Israeli taxes and tariffs on computer related equipment needed for Internet access.

3. The population needs greater awareness of the educational uses of the Internet.

4. Teachers in particular need education and appropriate training for teaching via the Internet.

5. Palestinians need political leadership to encourage educational uses of the Internet. Currently the Ministry of Education will not recognize a higher education degree if more than 30% of the courses were taken online.

Tech writing in Israel

I had the pleasure of attending Techshoret yesterday, the third annual conference of technical writers in Israel. The conference was held at the Jerusalem Conference Center in West Jerusalem. The four sessions I attended were all worthwhile and I had good conversation with a number of folks. I arrived about 8:40 a.m. at Binyanei HaUma, (Jerusalem Conference Center). I felt that I was in a different country than the one I live and work in—I was! Nearly all of the technical writers at the conference wore North American accents—there was a smattering of South African, Australian, and British English for good measure. I was a little apprehensive about attending the conference because my perception that some of the technical writers are Israeli settlers living on Palestinian land.

Paula Stern (WritePoint Ltd) got us started. Paula is a high-energy person who had answered my e-mail enquiry about STC Israel and then put me on to Techshoret, which was happening just a few days later (February 26). She introduced the nine (9) industry sponsors of the conference, some of whom made their own short presentations.
The first session I attended was Miriam Lottner’s (Tech Tav) Where, What, and How: The Future of Technical Documentation. We were 54 attendees in the room. Mariam made the claim that tech writers are producing products very similar to those we produced a decade ago. Not only that, but our salaries are at about the same level as well. She had one main point: Technical writers must be prepared to think outside the box and be as creative as possible in these difficult economic times. “Re-thinking re-tooling, and re-focusing”, is what we should be doing, she said. She said we should focus on content and better ROI (return on investment).

Quite a lot of discussion occurred in her session about various innovations that people in the audience had tried like a help system based on video clips that users send in and were then linked to from the company site. One idea that came up in the discussion was to use wikis instead of APIs. She concluded by saying that there is always a place in our profession for good content, that we should try to innovate at work, and that each of us should go back to work, make an appointment with our manager for a two weeks hence, and at that appointment propose an innovation at the company.
The second session I attended was Ben Goldfarb’s (WritePoint Ltd.) session with about 25 attendees, on Mindmapping and Technical Writing. Ben is a proponent of mind-mapping, a brainstorming, planning tool pioneered by Tony Buzan. Essentially mind-mappers, instead of taking written notes organized linearly, use visual representations of concepts in a radial network to take notes or plan documents or projects. The audience had a hard time at first trying to visualize brainstorming, but seemed to come around to its utility later. I and a few others came to Ben’s defense saying that mind-mapping, while not the perfect brainstorming/planning tool for everyone, is a good tool for some situations.

During the breaks I met several people who had heard my questions in previous sessions. In this way I met Aryeh Eisenberg of WebYeshiva, Eli Jacob of JBS, and a woman named Adina (sp?) who discussed the age-old question, should we teach tools or writing? I had lunch with Rich Teplitz and Andy Lewis (I think that’s him!) who discussed DITA and uses for Framemaker over lunch. After lunch I had a looked at the resume table where there were about 12 resumes of folks looking for work.
The third session (with 22 attendees), after our lunch break, was by Katriel Reichman (Kodak, Tel Aviv) Content without Borders: Working with a Global Documentation Team. Reichman made a very well-prepared presentation on the idea that cooperation across time zones and cultures can lead to difficulties in a tech pubs team, but that these difficulties can be overcome. He made the interesting observation that once the two teams, one in Vancouver, Canada and the other in Tel Aviv, had met for a F2F meeting during which they really got to know each other, they were able to function better online.

The final session (40 attendees) was put on by Jacob Richman (Maaleh Adumim), and titled Social Media Marketing: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and More. He told us that he had made aliyah (Zionist concept of Jews returning “home” to Israel from their native countries) from New York City (Brooklyn) 24 years ago, and he had the accent to prove it. His main point was that new media tools can be utilized for not only social networking, as many of us do, but also for business. He is clearly the kind of guy that is up all hours of the night publishing his blogs and trying out new tools. His presentation consisted of a series of examples of ways that new media can be adapted to making money or advertising various types of products.

Observations on Techshoret: The conference was very much on the STC conference model. ATTW (Association of Teachers of Technical Writing) is much more an academic conference whereas STC and Techshoret Israel are much more industry focused. Reichman’s presentation was the most academic-like presentation of the four I attended. What do I mean? By that I mean he made a more sophisticated analysis of his topic that the others. This does not mean that the other three were less useful, just that they were more industry focused. When I asked about the status of STC Israel, which I was told is the largest chapter outside the U.S., I was told that the fees had become too expensive for technical writers in Israel. Paula Stern, one of the main Techshoret organizers, was at one time a mainstay of STC Israel but clearly now devotes her time to her company WritePoint, Ltd. and Techshoret, an alternative to STC Israel. All in all, Techshoret was nine hours well spent.

Going home

Going home to al-Lydd...
My in-laws were originally from al-Lydd.


I went to church today at Keneeset al-Khader (St. George Church), in al-Lydd (Lod, in Hebrew). The local legend has it that one of St. George's parents was from al-Lydd so they take particular notice of him here. There were 20 worshippers in the ancient church today and after service the priest invited us across the alley to the reception hall for coffee. Christians in al-Lydd are Palestinian Arab with Israeli citizenship. They are the descendants of the few Arabs who were allowed to stay July 9-12, 1948 when Israeli forces took the town and expelled nearly all the indigenous people. The church itself shares a wall with Al-Khader Mosque.

Al-Lydd is not far from the coastal cities of Yaffa and Tel Aviv. We were lured there by the wonderful fish restaurants. They are definitely worth a visit.

The view from Yaffa to Tel Aviv. You notice the older Arab buildings of Yaffa and the newer Israeli buildings in Tel Aviv.



The view here is to the west and the Mediterranean. You see the minaret of a mosque in the background.